Elk Creek With the Wife

I've been fishing Elk Creek for about 15 years and, remarkably, my wife has never tagged along. Anne doesn't fish -- at least not much. But she enjoys the outdoors as much as I do, and loves to use her camera to capture God's wonders. But she's always deferred on the long haul east, mainly because the thought of waking well before dawn doesn't have much appeal to her.

But this morning I was in no hurry to get out early, and Anne took me up on the offer to head east together. We started out at the Legion Park and found the water high and dark (due to the decaying leaves). Anglers were reporting few fish and there didn't seem to be promising spots to fish that would be convenient for Anne. So we headed south to a stretch of the river upstream from Folly's. I hadn't fished the stretch in years, but found it to be in good shape. The water was clear in the riffles, but murky in the runs. A nice stretch of broken water was open and I moved in while checking with the man fishing upstream. He said he had hooked a few, but had only landed one. He landed another while I was getting rigged up and I figured we were in for a good day.

On the third cast I hooked and landed a nice male on an orange crystal meth with a bead. I proceeded to hook several more over the next 10 casts and lost them all. And that became the storyline of the day. The fish would move through every 20 minutes or so in pods and I'd hook several in a row, only to lose them all. The fish often charged right at me, sometimes in the water and sometimes through the air. Suffice to say the fish were hot and my skills were limited. Anne took several pictures, but grew tired of sitting on a log watching me fail to land a fish. She had decided she wanted to get her picture taken with a steelhead. And I spoiled the plan by failing to land another. Hopefully it won't take me 15 more years to give her a another chance to have her picture taken with an Elk Creek steelie.
Anne has Erie trips usually involve getting up before dawn to get on the water at first light. So AnnNow that the kids are off doing incredibly amazing things of the